Javier Zamora

Javier Zamora
Zamora, reading at Sacred Heart School, Washington, D.C. 2018
Born	1990 (age 34–35) San Luis La Herradura, El Salvador
Language	English, Spanish
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley (BA) New York University (MFA)
Genre	Poetry, Prose
Notable works	Unaccompanied, SOLITO, Nine Immigrant Years
Notable awards	Wallace Stegner Fellow, NEA Fellow, Lannan Foundation Fellow, Ruth Lilly Fellow, Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University
Spouse	Jo Blair Cipriano
Website
javierzamora.net

Javier Zamora (born 1990) is a Salvadoran poet and activist. Zamora is the author of Nine Immigrant Years (2011), Unaccompanied (2017), and Solito (2022). He has written works related towards his migration to the United States.

Zamora was born in San Luis La Herradura, El Salvador^[1] and illegally immigrated to the United States at the age of nine,^[2] joining his parents in California.^[3][4] His work surrounds borderland politics and race and how migration and civil war has affected him and his family. Zamora's father fled El Salvador due to the Civil war that was happening in El Salvador during the time. With Zamora's mother following shortly in 1995. After that Zamora was left in the care of his grandparents until he migrated to the United States through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert at the age of nine.^[5] Soon after Zamora began his eight-week journey from El Salvador to Mexico as an unaccompanied minor. The story of the poems is written by the eyes of the nine year old Zamora asking "what it means to be Salvadoran crossing countries that rob him of who he is?" Due to his experiences along that journey Zamora was inspired to write his novel "1999 & Other Poems" to bring awareness to the hostile environments those crossing the border face.^[6] In his final year of high school, visiting artist Rebecca Foust introduced Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair to the class, sparking Zamora's passion for poetry.^[7]

He earned a BA at the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA at New York University and was a 2016–2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.^[8][4] At the University of California, Berkeley Zamora pursued his degree and taught in June Jordan's Poetry for the People program. This was founded by June Jordan in 1991 and is intended to serve as an arts and activism program. The programs academic focus is teaching about reading, writing, poetry and building community. ^[9][10]

Zamora's chapbook Nueve Años Inmigrantes/Nine Immigrant Years won the 2011 Organic Weapon Arts Contest, and his first poetry collection, Unaccompanied,^[11] was published in 2017 by Copper Canyon Press. His poetry can be found in The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2013, Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.

Javier Zamora was a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow from 2018 to 2019. During that time, he worked on 1999 & Other Poems.^[12]

Zamora writes in Salvadoran Caliche.^[13]

Zamora's honors include Barnes & Noble Writer for Writer's Award (2016), Meridian Editors’ Prize, and the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Zamora has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, CantoMundo, Colgate University, The Frost Place,^[14] MacDowell Colony, the Macondo Writers Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing, and Yaddo.^[15][8] In 2017, Zamora was awarded the Narrative Prize for "Sonoran Song," "To the President-Elect," and "Thoughts on the Anniversary of My Crossing the Sonoran Desert".^[16][17] In 2023 he received a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for Solito: A Memoir. His debut work Solito: A Memoir recounting his journey from Mexico to the Sonoran Desert is a New York Times Bestseller. In 2024 Zamora is the winner of a Whiting Fellowship for Nonfiction Poetry.^[18][19]

Zamora was a founder, with poets Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and Christopher Soto (AKA Loma), of the Undocupoets campaign which eliminated citizenship requirements from major first poetry book prizes in the United States.^[1][20] "You're really forced into the MFA program, after which you go out and try to find a fellowship and, ideally, a book," Zamora adds. It's been a trend, and numerous pieces have been written about how the MFA route is problematic since it excludes many individuals of color.^[21]

• —— (2012). Nueve Años Immigrantes/Nine Immigrant Years. Organic Weapon Arts. ISBN 9780982710616.
• —— (2017). Unaccompanied. Copper Canyon Press. ISBN 9781556595110.
• —— (2022). Solito: A Memoir. Hogarth Books. ISBN 9780593498064.^[22]

• —— (2018). "Various Poems". In Melissa Tuckey (ed.). Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820353159.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Javier Zamora.

• Poetry and Profile at Poetry Foundation website
• Profile at Poets & Writers magazine
• "Sonoran Song and Other Poems" at Narrative Magazine.
• Appearances on C-SPAN